Wild Fires

The easiest step, said UC Berkeley energy economist Severin Borenstein, is “probably the thing that most people would be unhappy about”: reorganizing the company with a new management team and board and “just letting them continue on.” Several PG&E executives, including the previous CEO, recently departed the company, and at least half of the board will soon be gone as well.

In 1860, a young botanist raised in New York and schooled in Connecticut found himself on the payroll of the newly formed California Division of Mines and Geology. His job: Roam the vast, new state, taking samples and observations of plants and animals.

The Rim fire in 2013 brought devastation to a vast swath of Sierra Nevada forests west of Yosemite National Park. But the third largest wildfire in state history also seemed to have worked a political miracle, at least for a while.

John Muir, naturalist and cofounder of the Sierra Club, wrote of the forests in the Sierra Nevada, "Going to the woods is going home." Unfortunately, since 2014 that home has seen unprecedented levels of tree mortality with as many as 129 million trees across 8.9 million acres lost.